ELIZABETH BYRNE
Sir, - Could Father Patrick Mc Cafferty (January 17th) really be serious in claiming that pro-choice campaigners are somehow implicated in what he terms "a gross devaluation of humanity"? He cites the case of a Nigerian refugee in the Republic of Ireland who is making a claim for asylum on behalf of her unborn child, in the hope of reversing a deportation order.
The value placed upon a pregnancy is not dictated by any scientific fact or stage of development in itself, any more than it is contingent upon regular features or accepted notions of beauty. It is firmly based upon the emotional and psychological context in which it is located and the environment into which a baby may be born. These things are, of necessity, dependent very largely upon the context in which a woman becomes pregnant. Yet the no-choice lobby would enforce childbirth on every sexually active woman of child-bearing age and have no qualms about the implications of this on women's status as equal human beings.
It is just a little bit rich that Father McCafferty sees abortion as a symptom of an "anti-life ideology" exemplified, he claims, by Western indifference to horrific death rates and hardship in developing countries. Perhaps he should consider the well-documented refusal of the Catholic Hierarchy to sanction contraceptive use, even to endorse the use of condoms to address the spread of HIV/AIDs. More than 20 million people have died of HIV/AIDS over the past 20 years, 75 per cent of these in sub-Saharan Africa.
"Pro-life" positions are embraced by people with views like Father McCafferty's when it imposes significant controls, but not when they could save lives, empower, and accord dignity and some degree of self-determination to people. Could the self-styled "pro-life" lobby be more accurately described as "pro-life - but on our terms"? - Yours, etc.,
ELIZABETH BYRNE
McCULLOUGH,
Policy Officer,
Family Planning Association
of Northern Ireland,
University Street,
Belfast 7.